Performance Analysis
ICAS: Detecting Training Data from Autoregressive Image Generative Models
Yu, Hongyao, Qiu, Yixiang, Yang, Yiheng, Fang, Hao, Zhuang, Tianqu, Hong, Jiaxin, Chen, Bin, Wu, Hao, Xia, Shu-Tao
Autoregressive image generation has witnessed rapid advancements, with prominent models such as scale-wise visual auto-regression pushing the boundaries of visual synthesis. However, these developments also raise significant concerns regarding data privacy and copyright. In response, training data detection has emerged as a critical task for identifying unauthorized data usage in model training. To better understand the vulnerability of autoregressive image generative models to such detection, we conduct the first study applying membership inference to this domain. Our approach comprises two key components: implicit classification and an adaptive score aggregation strategy. First, we compute the implicit token-wise classification score within the query image. Then we propose an adaptive score aggregation strategy to acquire a final score, which places greater emphasis on the tokens with lower scores. A higher final score indicates that the sample is more likely to be involved in the training set. To validate the effectiveness of our method, we adapt existing detection algorithms originally designed for LLMs to visual autoregressive models. Extensive experiments demonstrate the superiority of our method in both class-conditional and text-to-image scenarios. Moreover, our approach exhibits strong robustness and generalization under various data transformations. Furthermore, sufficient experiments suggest two novel key findings: (1) A linear scaling law on membership inference, exposing the vulnerability of large foundation models. (2) Training data from scale-wise visual autoregressive models is easier to detect than other autoregressive paradigms. Our code is available at https://github.com/Chrisqcwx/ImageAR-MIA.
AI-Assisted Conversational Interviewing: Effects on Data Quality and Respondent Experience
Barari, Soubhik, Angbazo, Jarret, Wang, Natalie, Christian, Leah M., Dean, Elizabeth, Slowinski, Zoe, Sepulvado, Brandon
Standardized surveys scale efficiently but sacrifice depth, while conversational interviews improve response quality at the cost of scalability and consistency. This study bridges the gap between these methods by introdu cing a framework for AI - assisted conversational interviewing. To evaluate this framework, we conducted a web survey experiment where 1,800 p articipants were randomly assigned to AI ' chatbots ' which use large language models (LLMs) to dynamically probe respondents for elaboration and interactively code open - ended responses to fixed questions developed by human researchers . We assessed the AI chatbot's performance in terms of coding accuracy, response quality, and respondent experience. Our findings reveal that AI chatbots perform moderately well in live coding even without survey - specific fine - tuning, despite slightly inflated false positive err ors due to respondent acquiescence bias. Open - ended responses were more detailed and informative, but this came at a slight cost to respondent experience. Our findings highlight the feasibility of using AI methods such as chatbots enhanced by LLMs to enhance open - ended data collection in web surveys. 2
Nemotron-CLIMB: CLustering-based Iterative Data Mixture Bootstrapping for Language Model Pre-training
Diao, Shizhe, Yang, Yu, Fu, Yonggan, Dong, Xin, Su, Dan, Kliegl, Markus, Chen, Zijia, Belcak, Peter, Suhara, Yoshi, Yin, Hongxu, Patwary, Mostofa, Yingyan, null, Lin, null, Kautz, Jan, Molchanov, Pavlo
Pre-training datasets are typically collected from web content and lack inherent domain divisions. For instance, widely used datasets like Common Crawl do not include explicit domain labels, while manually curating labeled datasets such as The Pile is labor-intensive. Consequently, identifying an optimal pre-training data mixture remains a challenging problem, despite its significant benefits for pre-training performance. To address these challenges, we propose CLustering-based Iterative Data Mixture Bootstrapping (Nemotron-CLIMB), an automated framework that discovers, evaluates, and refines data mixtures in a pre-training setting. Specifically, Nemotron-CLIMB embeds and clusters large-scale datasets in a semantic space and then iteratively searches for optimal mixtures using a smaller proxy model and a predictor. When continuously trained on 400B tokens with this mixture, our 1B model exceeds the state-of-the-art Llama-3.2-1B by 2.0%. Moreover, we observe that optimizing for a specific domain (e.g., Social Sciences) yields a 5% improvement over random sampling. Finally, we introduce Nemotron-ClimbLab, a filtered 1.2-trillion-token corpus with 20 clusters as a research playground, and Nemotron-ClimbMix, a compact yet powerful 400-billion-token dataset designed for efficient pre-training that delivers superior performance under an equal token budget. We analyze the final data mixture, elucidating the characteristics of an optimal data mixture. Our data is available at: https://research.nvidia.com/labs/lpr/climb/
STaRFormer: Semi-Supervised Task-Informed Representation Learning via Dynamic Attention-Based Regional Masking for Sequential Data
Forstenhรคusler, Maximilian, Kรผlzer, Daniel, Anagnostopoulos, Christos, Parambath, Shameem Puthiya, Weber, Natascha
Understanding user intent is essential for situational and context-aware decision-making. Motivated by a real-world scenario, this work addresses intent predictions of smart device users in the vicinity of vehicles by modeling sequential spatiotemporal data. However, in real-world scenarios, environmental factors and sensor limitations can result in non-stationary and irregularly sampled data, posing significant challenges. To address these issues, we propose STaRFormer, a Transformer-based approach that can serve as a universal framework for sequential modeling. STaRFormer utilizes a new dynamic attention-based regional masking scheme combined with a novel semi-supervised contrastive learning paradigm to enhance task-specific latent representations. Comprehensive experiments on 56 datasets varying in types (including non-stationary and irregularly sampled), tasks, domains, sequence lengths, training samples, and applications demonstrate the efficacy of STaRFormer, achieving notable improvements over state-of-the-art approaches.
Instagram's age-verification identified a moustachioed adult as over 16 โ but how did it go with a 13-year-old?
In November Meta began notifying under-16 Instagram and Facebook users their accounts will be deactivated as part of Australia's social media ban for children. In November Meta began notifying under-16 Instagram and Facebook users their accounts will be deactivated as part of Australia's social media ban for children. Instagram's age-verification identified a moustachioed adult as over 16 - but how did it go with a 13-year-old? Meta platform allows users under 16 in Australia to change their date of birth - but only after clearing a'video selfie' or providing government ID Instagram's process for determining whether a user is over 16 is relatively quick and painless if you're clearly an adult - but how does it work if a 13-year-old tries to change their account's date of birth to make them appear grown up? Meta in November began notifying Instagram and Facebook users whose date of birth is set as under 16 - or who the platform understands to be under 16 - that their accounts will be deactivated as part of Australia's social media ban for children.
Accelerated Execution of Bayesian Neural Networks using a Single Probabilistic Forward Pass and Code Generation
Klein, Bernhard, Selker, Falk, Borras, Hendrik, Steger, Sophie, Pernkopf, Franz, Frรถning, Holger
Machine learning models perform well across domains such as diagnostics, weather forecasting, NLP, and autonomous driving, but their limited uncertainty handling restricts use in safety-critical settings. Traditional neural networks often fail to detect out-of-domain (OOD) data and may output confident yet incorrect predictions. Bayesian neural networks (BNNs) address this by providing probabilistic estimates, but incur high computational cost because predictions require sampling weight distributions and multiple forward passes. The Probabilistic Forward Pass (PFP) offers a highly efficient approximation to Stochastic Variational Inference (SVI) by assuming Gaussian-distributed weights and activations, enabling fully analytic uncertainty propagation and replacing sampling with a single deterministic forward pass. We present an end-to-end pipeline for training, compiling, optimizing, and deploying PFP-based BNNs on embedded ARM CPUs. Using the TVM deep learning compiler, we implement a dedicated library of Gaussian-propagating operators for multilayer perceptrons and convolutional neural networks, combined with manual and automated tuning strategies. Ablation studies show that PFP consistently outperforms SVI in computational efficiency, achieving speedups of up to 4200x for small mini-batches. PFP-BNNs match SVI-BNNs on Dirty-MNIST in accuracy, uncertainty estimation, and OOD detection while greatly reducing compute cost. These results highlight the potential of combining Bayesian approximations with code generation to enable efficient BNN deployment on resource-constrained systems.
Asymptotic Theory and Phase Transitions for Variable Importance in Quantile Regression Forests
Nakamura, Tomoshige, Shiraishi, Hiroshi
Quantile Regression Forests (QRF) are widely used for non-parametric conditional quantile estimation, yet statistical inference for variable importance measures remains challenging due to the non-smoothness of the loss function and the complex bias-variance trade-off. In this paper, we develop a asymptotic theory for variable importance defined as the difference in pinball loss risks. We first establish the asymptotic normality of the QRF estimator by handling the non-differentiable pinball loss via Knight's identity. Second, we uncover a "phase transition" phenomenon governed by the subsampling rate $ฮฒ$ (where $s \asymp n^ฮฒ$). We prove that in the bias-dominated regime ($ฮฒ\ge 1/2$), which corresponds to large subsample sizes typically favored in practice to maximize predictive accuracy, standard inference breaks down as the estimator converges to a deterministic bias constant rather than a zero-mean normal distribution. Finally, we derive the explicit analytic form of this asymptotic bias and discuss the theoretical feasibility of restoring valid inference via analytic bias correction. Our results highlight a fundamental trade-off between predictive performance and inferential validity, providing a theoretical foundation for understanding the intrinsic limitations of random forest inference in high-dimensional settings.
What Is the Optimal Ranking Score Between Precision and Recall? We Can Always Find It and It Is Rarely $F_1$
Piรฉrard, Sรฉbastien, Deliรจge, Adrien, Van Droogenbroeck, Marc
Ranking methods or models based on their performance is of prime importance but is tricky because performance is fundamentally multidimensional. In the case of classification, precision and recall are scores with probabilistic interpretations that are both important to consider and complementary. The rankings induced by these two scores are often in partial contradiction. In practice, therefore, it is extremely useful to establish a compromise between the two views to obtain a single, global ranking. Over the last fifty years or so,it has been proposed to take a weighted harmonic mean, known as the F-score, F-measure, or $F_ฮฒ$. Generally speaking, by averaging basic scores, we obtain a score that is intermediate in terms of values. However, there is no guarantee that these scores lead to meaningful rankings and no guarantee that the rankings are good tradeoffs between these base scores. Given the ubiquity of $F_ฮฒ$ scores in the literature, some clarification is in order. Concretely: (1) We establish that $F_ฮฒ$-induced rankings are meaningful and define a shortest path between precision- and recall-induced rankings. (2) We frame the problem of finding a tradeoff between two scores as an optimization problem expressed with Kendall rank correlations. We show that $F_1$ and its skew-insensitive version are far from being optimal in that regard. (3) We provide theoretical tools and a closed-form expression to find the optimal value for $ฮฒ$ for any distribution or set of performances, and we illustrate their use on six case studies.
Automated Statistical and Machine Learning Platform for Biological Research
Lego, Luke Rimmo, Gauthier, Samantha, Baptiste, Denver Jn.
Research increasingly relies on computational methods to analyze experimental data and predict molecular properties. Current approaches often require researchers to use a variety of tools for statistical analysis and machine learning, creating workflow inefficiencies. We present an integrated platform that combines classical statistical methods with Random Forest classification for comprehensive data analysis that can be used in the biological sciences. The platform implements automated hyperparameter optimization, feature importance analysis, and a suite of statistical tests including t tests, ANOVA, and Pearson correlation analysis. Our methodology addresses the gap between traditional statistical software, modern machine learning frameworks and biology, by providing a unified interface accessible to researchers without extensive programming experience. The system achieves this through automatic data preprocessing, categorical encoding, and adaptive model configuration based on dataset characteristics. Initial testing protocols are designed to evaluate classification accuracy across diverse chemical datasets with varying feature distributions. This work demonstrates that integrating statistical rigor with machine learning interpretability can accelerate biological discovery workflows while maintaining methodological soundness. The platform's modular architecture enables future extensions to additional machine learning algorithms and statistical procedures relevant to bioinformatics.
Towards Continuous Intelligence Growth: Self-Training, Continual Learning, and Dual-Scale Memory in SuperIntelliAgent
Lin, Jianzhe, Pan, Zeyu, Zhu, Yun, Song, Ruiqi, Yang, Jining
W e introduce SuperIntelliAgent, an agentic learning framework that couples a trainable small diffusion model (the learner) with a frozen large language model (the verifier), enabling continual intelligence growth through self-supervised interaction. Unlike conventional supervised fine-tuning with annotated data, SuperIntelliAgent learns autonomously in an annotation-free manner: the learner generates candidate outputs, the verifier evaluates them via step-by-step reasoning, and the learner-verifier interaction loop produces chosen/rejected pairs for Direct Preference Optimization (DPO), transforming every input into a pseudo-training signal for continual self-improvement. The framework integrates a dual-scale memory mechanism--short-term, in-context memory that preserves reasoning traces across iterative refinement cycles, and long-term memory that consolidates acquired knowledge into model parameters through on-the-fly fine-tuning. T o enhance optimization, a replay buffer selectively retains samples showing verifiable progress from failed to satisfied conditions and replays them as auxiliary supervision, reinforcing recent learning while bootstrapping adaptive curricula that accelerate intelligence acquisition. Designed to be infrastructure-agnostic, SuperIntelliAgent can be seamlessly integrated into existing agentic frameworks (e.g., autogen, semantic kernel, etc.), while simultaneously transforming ordinary inference cycles into lifelong optimization. W e posit that agentic pairing constitutes the minimal reliable unit of growing intelligence, as paired feedback, augmented with partial-history replay, yields richer learning curricula, tighter preference alignment, and stronger generalization. With extremely few DPO pairs generated automatically by SuperIntelliAgent and used for lightweight fine-tuning, the learner performance improves across all benchmarks.